Canon Wonder Camera concept unveiled

Canon has shown off a potentially market-changing camera at this year’s Shanghai Expo, called the Wonder Camera. This all-in-one concept works around the principle of capturing stills from video, as the footage is constantly in focus. This is aided by an incredibly advanced image stabilization system and new lens technology which allows for both close focusing and incredibly high magnification.

The demonstration showed a number of the Wonder Camera’s assets, including an impressive face recognition feature that picked out around 20 faces in the Expo audience, and then identified those that were smiling within that frame.

The camera was almost entirely devoid of physical buttons, offering either touch sensitive panels or touch screen for the majority of the functions. With a white unibody around the same size as a bridge camera the Wonder Camera still has to satisfy the ‘big zoom, big lens’ necessity as with current models, but is still impressively small compared to the amount of zoom being offered.

The concept was hindered by the need for a backpack unit, but with the constant advancement of storage and processing it’s doubtful the 20 year lead time for a working version will be a reality. We expect to see a version of the Wonder Camera far earlier, and although Canon has yet to release any concrete specs the sample video makes the product look like the next significant step in photography.

Although digital cameras have gone some way to putting advanced techniques into the hands of beginners through simplification and more intelligent features. With a camera capable of shooting video, focusing at incredible distances and zooming to an impressive level with no consequences on the image quality even absolute beginners should be able to take high quality stills.

There will always be a group more interested in manual control, as even the most intelligent camera in the world will have difficulty predicting what a photographer is about to shoot rather than just reacting to it, but the Wonder Camera could go some way to bringing an all-encompassing recording device to the masses.

For more information on the Shanghai Expo go to www. http://en.expo2010.cn/